If the motion for recognition of the Armenian Genocide was successful this year in the Israeli Knesset, despite his misgivings, Harry Hagopian - alongside scores of other Armenian and non-Armenian scholars, activists, sympathisers and grassroots - will rejoice at this moral and equitable achievement.

There are plenty of grounds for a paradoxical 'pessoptimism' about developments in the Middle East and North Africa, writes Harry Hagopian. The huge Arab struggles for dignity and freedom are vital but will take a long time. History in Europe and the USA should surely teach us that revolutions are never made in one swoop, but take time and cause pain.

In a region where tensions, animosity and outright violence often abound between different communities and also different faiths (let alone between communities and the 'state' itself), Qatar has been one of those encouraging and forward-looking stories of relative conviviality, learn-as-you-go openness and consequential growth.

There are serious questions to be asked about the unity pact between the two Palestinian factions of Fatah and Hamas, says Harry Hagopian. But meanwhile the Israeli prime minister remains dwarfed by the real significance of the Arab Spring, and a huge block to progress towards a just peace for all. He is still a tactician at best, with precious little strategic foresight.

No matter which way the winds blow in the weeks ahead, it is clear that the majority of Syrians desperately seek reform but they also fear sectarianism and foreign intervention, says Harry Hagopian. Much will depend upon how parties both inside and outside the country, including the power-brokers, choose to respond. An approach which feeds hope at the base rather than replicating top-down diplomacy is needed.

The fifth and final blog/podcast in a series of Easter Week reflections from a Middle Eastern perspective by regular Ekklesia contributor Dr Harry Hagopian. These talks (see MP3 below) are being broadcast by Premier Christian Radio, and are reproduced with their cooperation.

How should one respond to decades of subjugation, oppression, marginalisation, imprisonment, brutalisation, torture, rendition, murder and unenlightenment? Harry Hagopian examines the case of Syria, and finds complexity and long-term struggle, as well as immediate rebellion and repression, in the picture.

People in the Middle East and North Africa are struggling to change the lexicon of their erstwhile realities with a series of trial and error policies, says Harry Hagopian. But whether the uprisings go the bumpy way of the 1848 European revolutions, emulate the South African path of truth and reconciliation, follow the East European fast lane of 1989, or entrench the violence we have been witnessing lately, surely freedom cannot be snuffed out forever?

With Easter Sunday this year coinciding for the first time with the memorial day for the 1915 Armenian Genocide, Harry Hagopian explores a painful history and asks how, in the present and future, those who inherit the mantle of the victims can move forward to discover new life.